Although as a rule one cannot validly derive either p or q from a
premiss of the form "p or q", this move often seems to be valid when the
disjunction is suitably embedded, as in: "Maybe p or q; therefore maybe
p." I propose to explain such free choice inferences as conversational
implicatures in the sense of Grice; in particular, I maintain that they
are quantity implicatures. I'm not the first to suggest this course, but
thus far it has proved difficult to carry out. The problem, I argue, is
that the standard treatment of quantity implicatures gets off on the
wrong foot, by asking why the speaker didn't make a stronger statement
than he did. Once this is corrected, and we begin by asking instead what
the speaker's intentional states might be like, free choice inferences
are readily accounted for as a garden variety of quantity implicature.